‘Make in India’: This is how IT firms will encourage domestic manufacturing of personal computers

Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (Mait) has requested the government for extension of differential duty structure on IT hardware to encourage India-based creation of personal computers. This industry body represents companies like Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer, Cisco, HCL Infosystems and Intel among many others.

Anwar Shirpurwala, executive director of Mait, has revealed that the differential duty structure for IT hardware, “specifically laptops, desktops, wired and wireless customer premises equipment (CPE)and e-readers, are at par with smartphones and tablets." This information was revealed in a PTI report.

In budget 2015-16, the government had provided exemption to mobile phone and tablet PC manufactures in the country from payment of customs duty and excise duty on procurement of all goods required for manufacturing. And owing to the removal of special additional duty, local manufactures started using imported motherboards because they are available at a lower price.

In FY15-16, mobile phone companies like Gionee, Xiaomi, Lava, Karbonn, HTC, Datawind, etc., became a part the Modi government’s ‘Make in India’ drive by starting production of their handsets in the country.